Responsiveness and Early Language DevelopmentParents' responsiveness promotes infants' communicative skills well before infants produce conventional words. For example, researchers have documented real-time changes in the sophistication of infants' babbling following maternal responsiveness. In one study, infants were randomly assigned to a contingent-feedback condition (i.e., mothers were instructed to verbally respond to their infants' babbling) or a noncontingent-feedback condition (i.e., mothers' verbal input was temporally dissociated from their infants' babbling; Goldstein & Schwade, 2008). Infants in the contingent condition modified their babbling to mirror the phonological structure 522813C DPXXX10.

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We examined gestural and verbal interactions in 226 mother-infant pairs from Mexican, Dominican, and African American backgrounds when infants were 14 months and 2 years of age, and related these interactions to infants' emerging skills. At both ages, dyads were video-recorded as they shared a wordless number book, a wordless emotion book, and beads and string. We coded mothers' and infants' gestures and language/vocalizations. Each maternal utterance was coded as referential (e.g. 'That's a bead') or regulatory (e.g. 'Put it there'). Mothers reported on infants' gestural, receptive, and productive vocabularies at 14 months, and infants were assessed on receptive language, expressive language, and action sequencing and imitation at 2 years of age. Mothers of the three ethnicities differed in their gesturing, distributions of the two types of language, and coupling of language and gestures. Mothers' ethnicity, language, and gestures were differentially associated with infants' 2-year skills. Mother-infant communicative interactions are foundational to infant learning and development, and ethnic differences in modes of early communication portend divergent pathways in the development of specific skills.